If you was here you would curse live Oak

From the excellent Perilous Fight by Stephen Budiansky, an account of the naval aspects of the War of 1812. Page 79.

Humphreys confidently predicted that fifty-five men could cut all the live oak needed for one frigate—about five hundred trees’ worth—in two months. But he utterly underestimated the obstacles involved in working in the inhospitable locales where it was found. Finding local labor, hacking out roads through the woods with teams of oxen and horses, and fighting torrential rains and sickness all but unmanned the supervisor sent to manage the business, a Boston shipwright named John T. Morgan. From Georgia he wrote Humphreys, “These Moulds frighten me they are so large,” and cataloged all his woes. “I lost a fine lad, an apprentice last Saturday with fever, I have it now, everybody is sick here. If I am to stay here till all the timber is cut I shall be dead … I cannot stand it.” When Humphreys tried to shame him for his slowness, Morgan replied, “You say that if I was there I should be mortified, if you was here you would curse live Oak.” Several more of the northern carpenters died, others deserted, but by the end of the year a shipment arrived in Philadelphia that was everything Humphreys had hoped for. “One cargo of live oak has arrived from Georgia … most of which is now under workmen’s hands,” Humphreys reported in late December 1794. “This timber is greatly superior to any in Europe, and the best which ever came to this place.”